Are the New Apple iMacs With Intel Ivy Bridge Coming Soon?

(prHWY.com) April 21, 2012 - florida, United Kingdom -- Apple and Intel teamed up previously on last year's iMac Thunderbolt products, which gave Apple a head start on integrating the chip giant's "Light Peak" interconnect technology. Apple has been said to be ramping up production of new 15-inch MacBook Pro models carrying a thinner form factor, with Intel's rumored April 29 debut of quad-core mobile Ivy Bridge processors undoubtedly driving that timeline. Users hoping for updated 13" and possibly 17" models will likely have to wait until at least June, however.

New benchmarks point to decent performance jumps for upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge mobile processors. That should translate pretty directly to faster Apple and Windows laptops. The 7-series chipset supports USB 3.0 and features Intel responsiveness technologies like Smart Response, Smart Connect, and Rapid Start. The first Ivy Bridge mobile processors are due to be announced later this month. Intel said in a statement that 7-series products are now available to its OEM partners and that it is also releasing several of its own desktop motherboards featuring its own 7-series Express Chipset. MacBook Pros and high-end Windows gaming laptops use mobile quad-core processors. Needless to say, quad-core Ivy Bridge laptops will almost invariably come with "discrete" standalone graphics from Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices. But today many systems are designed to use both Intel and discrete graphics -- so Intel GPU performance is not irrelevant, even in these brawny laptops. And Intel GPUs will be very relevant with thin laptop designs that use only Intel graphics.

Several resellers, including Best Buy, have recently run out of stock of some 15" MacBook Pro models. Low stock at resellers is usually the first reliable indicator that production of a current model has begun to slow or stop in anticipation of a replacement. Intel hasn't announced an official release date for its next-gen, 22-nanometer Ivy Bridge chips, but signs point to a staggered release that will begin with the launch of several desktop and notebook chips at the end of this month, followed by another wave of Ivy Bridge parts being made available to computer makers in May or June. With dual-core Ivy Bridge processors not launching until early June, it seems that Apple may not be launching upgraded 13-inch MacBook Pro models until that time. As for the 17-inch MacBook Pro, Apple was likely to use a staggered rollout of the new MacBook Pro form factor, with the 17-inch model not receiving an update until perhaps several months after the smaller models.

We felt a staggered release was less likely given Apple's typical upgrade cycles, the recent inventory slowdown suggests otherwise. Power-efficient dual-core Ivy Bridge chips that are expected to land in the MacBook Air and Ultrabooks should appear later in the spring. The new iMacs are reportedly being assembled by Foxconn and Quanta Computer, the Asian manufacturers which built last year's models for Apple.

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